Lunation Index

I map you in cold units:

384,400 km of ache between tug and breath.

Eccentricity: 0.0549, a slight imperfection,

like a mouth that never quite says yes.

-

You keep the same face turned to me.

Is that loyalty or constraint?

Synchronous rotation, tidal cuffs of gravity.

Do you even want to be here, or would you rather be free?

-

Perigee leans close, fogs the glass.

Apogee drifts off, unread.

Inclination 5.145 degrees:

just enough mischief to miss the perfect plane,

just enough to keep your eclipses rare.

-

Your skin is bruise-light, albedo low,

basalt seas fossilized mid-surge.

Regolith tastes of spent fireworks,

salt after sex,

gunpowder on the tongue of memory.

Moonquakes ticking under the ribs like beatings you don’t forget.

Space is not a gentle girlfriend.

-

The math indicts:

sidereal 27.32166 days, synodic 29.53.

Two clocks quarrelling in my chest.

A saros beads the dark:

eighteen years, eleven days, eight hours,

shadow to shadow like a vow.

Our barycenter hides inside my maw,

a stone in the throat of my tide.

We are badly divided, you and I,

never separate, however much we desire.

-

Libration: your mask twitches.

A corner slips.

I glimpse a little more country than I paid for.

-

I brought thresholds and ratios.

Roche limit whispered like a warning label:

come closer and unmake.

Mass ratio 1 to 81.3:

not child, not parent, but trouble.

-

So hear me, quiet tyrant, pocked coin in the black:

I will count your nearest lies and your farthest cries.

I will count craters until counting fails,

then start on silence.

-

And to the deity rumored behind you,

to the hand allegedly turning this slow wheel:

meet me at the ascending node with your ephemeris open.

Prove an orbit that is not hunger alone.

Balance this tide lest we both drown.

If you tune my moods, show me the calculus;

reveal to me a law that doesn’t bruise to keep us near.

Until you do, I choose the numbers.

Until then, Moon, we make our own liturgy

of gravity and refusal,

and enter it into evidence.

.